The Mindset Mentor - Why It's Impossible to Change Other People

Episode Date: October 2, 2020

In this episode, I am going to explain the psychological reasons why it is so hard to change yourself and other people.Join my FREE 2 Day Virtual Event called Mindset Mastery this weekend here: https://www.2020mindsetevent.com/ Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

Welcome to today's episode. Today we're going to be talking about why it is so hard for you to change. Now, I will say this. I'm going to be talking about politics today. I don't want to talk about politics. I'm not going to be talking about anything about politics itself. I'm going to be talking about the psychology that goes behind politics which will make sense when you think about politics or you think about religion or you just think about your beliefs and why it's so hard to change from your beliefs. And to give you an example and to go through this I'm going to talk about politics right now. If you live in America if you happen to know what's going on in America it's kind of crazy and just things are

happening and nobody really knows what's going on, I feel like. But once again, this could be used for politics, religion, beliefs. This could even be used talking about a sports team, which I'll talk about as well. More than anything else, this is how your brain works and how your brain will latch onto something and doesn't want to give up once it latches onto that one thing. And there's a couple of things, a couple of terms I'm going to give you and go over today. The first one is something called cognitive dissonance. And cognitive dissonance basically at its simplest form means I believe this one thing.

And when I think about this one thing and I hear something that doesn't line up with that, there's dissonance between the two of them. And so it basically shakes up the foundation of what I believe in, AKA what I actually set my life up as. And whenever you got to think about this way, if I believe this one thing and this, this other thing comes in, it causes dissonance. It causes inconsistency in my brain and human brains do not like inconsistency because inconsistency is a threat because your brain, you've heard me say this a million times, only cares about your survival. And so if it only cares about your survival, if there's some form of inconsistency, that can be dangerous. Now we're

talking about politics or religion, or we're talking about, you know, a sports team. None of those are going to kill you if there's some dissonance, but your brain doesn't know the difference between the two. And so it actually gives you a mental feeling, but also a physical feeling as well. And so when we come across an inconsistency in the way that we feel or in our beliefs, we want to restore the consistency as soon as possible. And so you'll do one of two things. Either number one, you'll rationalize or number two, you're trivialize something. An example of rationalizing, you know, if you look at the

debates, for instance, you know, you'll hear somebody say something that's completely out of left field that if it wasn't anything to having to do with their political beliefs, somebody would probably be like, oh yeah, that was a terrible thing to say. But because somebody says it and they happen to be the same political party, they'll rationalize that thing that that person said to then make them feel like they're back into a safe place and a place that's okay. Now, if someone from the other side comes and says something, they'll try to trivialize it. They'll try to make that thing, you know, if somebody says something and they that's on the other side of me and they try to put themselves up, I want to try to

break them down so that therefore I don't feel like they're above me or I don't feel like their political party is better than mine. And so we'll dive deeper into these things. But what I want to talk about is why do we need to feel that feeling of resolve deep down inside of us? Well, number one, we don't want the inconsistency because here's the reason why. Inconsistency can cause actual physical, make you physically uncomfortable. To have inconsistency in your mind can make you physically uncomfortable when you're finding something that's inconsistent with what you set your life up to believe or what you actually say, this is how I base my life. I base my life off of the left side or I base my life off of the right side. And when someone comes in and says something to you that starts to shake

that up, you could become physically uncomfortable. And so what do people do? A lot of times they get angry and they start yelling at each other in the streets or they yell at each other on Facebook or they honk horns at the person that's holding the wrong sign or whatever it is. So it can cause physical discomfort, but it also causes mental discomfort where this person is kind of shaking up my beliefs. I need to do whatever I can to restore the consistency in my brain so that I feel better mentally, but then I also feel better physically as well. that I feel better mentally, but then I also feel better physically as well. And humans always want to know where they stand. And, you know, someone is on one side and they're on this side right here. And let's say I'm on this side. And then someone comes in with completely different beliefs.

That's threatening to me. I must bring it down. And the reason why is because that person's beliefs getting thrown at my beliefs causes cognitive dissonance, which is once again, inconsistency, AKA threatening. And there's something called a law of consistency. And humans want to remain consistent with what they've always known or what they've always believed. And so we have a self image

that we've built up over our entire lives. This is who I am. This is what I believe. This is the things that I love. These are the things that I hate. This is who I am. This is what I believe. This is the things that I love. These are the things that I hate. This is my political stance. This is my religion. This is my team that I root for. All of that stuff. We have a self-image to uphold. And we get angry or we start to get really, I mean, pissed off at somebody when they come in and they start to challenge what we feel are our actual beliefs. Now we see, if you go on Facebook, if you go look at the news, any of those things that are

happening right now, you can literally see people battling all over the place because there's somebody coming in and causing cognitive dissonance with another person. And they're basically causing cognitive dissonance between the two of them. And so they try to bring each other down to make them feel like they're better than the other one, which is then above this one thing. And it goes back to tribalism. And I'll talk about tribalism in just a minute. So here's what we should do though. This is the most important thing. Instead of having to feel like we need to prove somebody wrong because they are on the other side giving us cognitive dissonance. We just have to let them have their beliefs. It's that simple. We have to let other people have their beliefs. Just because someone doesn't have the same beliefs as you doesn't mean that there's something wrong. You

have to believe that just because someone isn't voting for the same person you're voting for, there's not something wrong with them. Just because someone doesn't believe the same religion or ideologies as you doesn't mean there's something wrong with them. You have to try to convert them just because someone doesn't root for the same football or basketball or baseball team for you doesn't mean that you have to try to bring them down, right? What they believe is good for them. What you believe is good for you and your beliefs come off of years and years and years of life events, of programming, of people that you've talked to. It's so deeply rooted that the worst thing you can try to do is try to change somebody because you cannot change somebody. Scientists have actually,

you know, psychologists have actually gone into this and found that it's literally impossible to try to change somebody and their belief structure. And when you do try to change someone, their belief structure, you actually make their belief structure, their belief structure stronger because of the fact that you're trying to call, like come in and cause cognitive dissonance for them. So they will actually deeper root into what they believe in because of that. So you can't change someone's mind. So stop battling, stop trying to fight with them on Facebook, stop trying to, you know, bring them down. Stop trying to, you know, throw stuff at people that have signs that aren't the same person that you're voting for. Stop, you know, throwing stuff at people that aren't wearing the same jerseys that

you are because it goes down to something that they call partisanship and partisanship as humans. We want to feel like we're part of a group and this is built into us. It goes back to tribalism. We want to feel like we're a part of a group. This is my tribe and I will do anything at any cost to protect my tribe. So when someone comes in and they seem like they're coming from another tribe, it starts to get us angry. It feels, we feel like we have to actually fight and battle in order to make sure that that person doesn't come in and mess with our survival or mess with our safety. And so humans, we want to create an identity.

This is me. This is my tribe. These are the colors that we wear. These are the things that we believe in. All of that stuff. We want to create an identity. With that, sometimes people fall into a political identity. And in turn, they will defend that group at any

cost sometimes. And it's like, if you believe in this group and someone comes in and tries to attack that group, it's the same thing as thousands of years ago when it was your tribe and someone from a neighboring tribe came over. If someone from a neighboring tribe came over, it wasn't like they were coming over for cookies or to have a conversation. It was war. It was battle. It was to the death. And so we've got this built into us of, I need to protect my people at all costs. And this is when it becomes very dangerous because a lot of people lack the self-awareness that this is actually a thing, that partisanship and tribalism is actually a thing. You know, we, where it gets really dangerous is this, is when we want someone to believe something, we can say something over and over

and over and over and over and over and over again. And people start to identify with that thing. And if you tell a story over and over and over again, our brain, it's really hard for our brain to decide the difference between familiarity and distinguished familiarity from truth. And so a lot of times truth can be over here to the side, but familiarity, actually, we think that even though we've, even though this truth is over here, but on the other side is the familiarity. We think that because of the fact that it's familiar, we've heard this story so many times, that what's familiar is actually true. And the reason why is because humans and all of the stuff that we passed on from generation

and generation years ago came through stories. So we think stories become true. Hey, do you hate wearing dress shirts? Buttercloth has designed a men's dress shirt that is the most comfortable dress shirt that I've ever put on and it was designed by a young fashion designer that came here from vietnam and invented a fabric that's so revolutionary it caught the attention of shark tank where robert hershevek loved it so much he invested 250 000 into it and it's the world's most comfortable dress shirt in my opinion i feel like i'm wearing a t-shirt whenever i'm wearing them because it's

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what he's saying by all of these Republicans and all of the shit that they do. And then some of you who are Republicans and you're looking at this going, oh my God, I can completely see how all of these Democrats are always coming over and doing the same thing. So I want you to pause real quick and become self-aware of what I'm saying and go, oh my God, am I looking through the filter? Am I listening to what he's saying through my filter right now? Or can I take the filter off and just listen to it and go, okay, some of my side is right, some of the other side is right.

There is no right, there is no wrong between them. It's just people's beliefs. And it's modern day tribalism is what it comes down to. Tribalism was, I have to defend my tribe at all costs. And tribalism is hardwired into our brains. Nowadays, you just happen to see political tribalism. And this is something that's been built into us. But then also, just so you know, because of the fact that as sad as it is, all of the powers to be, no psychology really well, they've been using this against us for a

long, long time. And there was a study that found out in the 1950s, only 5% of parents, they did a study, 5% of parents cared if their child married somebody from a different political party than theirs. 5% in the 50s. In 2020, that number is 50%. So tribalism, not only is it built into us, but it's also been used against us to divide everybody that's out there. So once again, this could be used for politics. This could be used for religion. This could be used for sports teams. This could be used a lot of different things that are out there, but I'm just using it for what's going on right now. I want you to understand what's going on in the psychology of what's going on right now. So when you look at the current state of the world and the state of the United States, you can go, oh, now I understand

the psychology behind all these things that are happening. Let me give you an idea of a, let me get an example of a sports team, right? I watch basketball. I love basketball. Sometimes I catch myself doing this and I catch myself watching a basketball game and my team will really badly foul somebody. And I try to justify in my own head why that wasn't a foul, even though it's clearly a foul, but because it's my team, right? And then I'll see the other team and they don't get a foul called on them. And I'm like, that's definitely a foul. You know, refs are against me, all of these things. And so basketball is a perfect example. Your team can really foul somebody, but what you will do is you'll try to justify that foul. You'll say, oh, you know, well,

it wasn't that bad of a foul because if you think about this team, they just had a terrible foul a little while ago as well. So basically it's even now, or we'll say, oh, the refs are just having a terrible game. And what we'll do is we'll try to justify those things to basically keep, you know, the good stature of the way that we feel about the team that we actually follow. It's literally hard to admit that your team is wrong. That's what's crazy about it. It's hard to admit that your team is wrong. So we have to justify whatever that wrong thing was to feel the feelings of resolve

because humans don't want to feel like they're wrong. So we have to justify those things. And you can see it. It's crazy. I have some friends that are Democrats. I have some friends that are Republicans, and both of them will see the exact same thing. Like for instance, right now, there was the debates a few days ago. They'll take the exact same debate. And my friends that are Democrats will talk about all of the things that make Democrats better and all the things that made Republicans bad in that situation. And all of the Republicans will make all of their posts about how the Republicans are right and the

Democrats are wrong. And so literally what they're trying to do is they're looking at the exact same freaking thing, but they're seeing it completely different because they're looking at it through a lens of Democrat or Republican, right? If I'm sitting and watching a basketball game, then it's the Heat versus the Lakers. The Lakers fans are looking at it from the lens of the Lakers and why they weren't getting the fouls that they want or why those fouls were justified. The Heat fans are looking at it and going, oh, these fouls are justified because of this and because the Lakers got that as well. It's modern day tribalism. That's all that it really is. And it's built into us and hardwired. The only thing that we can do is become very self-aware and take ourself

outside of our own heads and go, oh yeah, I'm definitely using tribalism right now. That was a really bad foul. It doesn't matter if it's my team. Either way, it's a bad foul. So you have to realize that. And these types of cases, what's crazy about it, whether it's sports, whether it's religion, whether it's beliefs, whether it's politics, in these types of cases, people are actually more likely to agree with their group than to actually see the world accurately because it's so hardwired into us to make sure that we keep our group safe and our group right. So we will identify with the group, even if it's wrong, more than to actually see the world accurately as it truly is. And because of the fact that people like to have an identity, whether that's a political identity or whatever it is, it leads people to reject evidence that's inconsistent with their views.

You can have real hardcore evidence come to somebody and if it doesn't line up with their views, they will reject it because they don't want to see the world accurately if it brings down whatever group they're a part of. And so it actually changes the lens of the way that you see the world accurately if it brings down whatever group they're a part of. And so it actually changes the lens of the way that you see the world. Two people, once again, can see the exact same debate, but because they're seeing it through different lenses, either the right or the left, they're seeing two completely different things because they only see what they want to. They only see what they want to. Now, what makes it even crazier is if you go into something called confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is we only see evidence from our side of the table and we only want to see evidence from our side of the table. So we create groups

and only stay in those groups. What do I mean by that? We only watch the news station that goes with our political groups. And just so you guys know? We only watch the news station that goes with our political groups. And just so you guys know, like I don't really follow any news or political group or any of that stuff. So I have, you know, no dog in the fight, but people only see evidence that goes on their side of the table. So whenever we hear a story, we hear a story through the lens of our own beliefs. You know, people watch the debate, they see this person on the left, they see this person on the right, and they figure out who they're for and who they're against. And then they see the debate through that I'm for this or I'm against that. The problem with that now is because they create something that are like, if we're talking about politics

or anything, politics, religion, or sports, all of those things, we create, if we're taking politics issues as an example, political echo chambers. So if I'm on this group, then I'm going to only watch news that confirms that my beliefs are correct. I'm going to only have friends on Facebook that agree with my political posts. I'm going to only have friends on Facebook that agree with my political posts. I'm going to only be part of Facebook groups that believe with my political posts. I'm only going to follow people who are in the politics that are on the same team as me. And I create this echo chamber of I'm only receiving information that basically tells me that I am right.

It's called confirmation bias. I have to confirm that what I believe in is real because I don't want cognitive dissonance to come in and make me feel like the ground that I stand on isn't as firm as I once thought that it was. On top of all of this now, now you've also got computers with algorithms, Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and all of those, even Google, all of them are based off of an algorithm. So if I am on this side and I search for things that are on this side, I'm only going to get the news and information based off of this side. If I am on the other side, I'm only going to get news based off of that because the algorithms give me what I'm most likely to pay attention to. And so we create these echo

chambers where we don't even allow ourselves to get outside of our own heads and go, maybe there is another viewpoint that I can listen to and start to understand people from. And that's the biggest problem that we have right now is that people can't look at someone else with different views and different beliefs without going, you're wrong. They can't sit there and go, hey, let me listen to this person with compassion because I guarantee if you strip whatever it is that makes that person different from you, whether it's their politics or whether it's their religion or whether it's their team that they root for, and you have a conversation that has nothing to do with any of those, you could find something in common that you could get along with.

But what happens is people don't understand, number one, that confirmation bias is this, and they only want to be around people who are like them. Number two, they don't realize that this tribalism is built into us. So it's something that's really hard to get away from unless you're being very self-aware. And number three, that cognitive dissonance exists, and we don't want the foundation of what we built our life around, which are beliefs to be proven wrong. And so we will actually believe something that's fake over something that's true. And so, you know, with that being said, it's, I'll give you a quick little story to just remember this by so you can understand and kind of hardwire this into your brain.

And it's an example of a priest and an atheist that are sitting there at coffee, you know, sitting down and having coffee together. And the atheist talks about this story of how he was out and he was on his boat and this big, huge storm came. The storm came and it was throwing him left and it was throwing him right and it was raining, it was raining, it was raining. And the atheist says, I don't, I don't know. I just, I just don't believe in God. And the priest says, well, why don't you believe in God? And he said, well, because I was on this boat in the middle of a storm and I thought I was going to die.

And it was the very first time in my life that I prayed. And I sat there and I prayed to God and I said, God, please save me. Please, if you do anything, if you could just make this storm stop, that's the thing that I want. Make this storm stop, please's the thing that I want. Make this storm stop, please, so that I can live. And the priest says, so why don't you believe in God now? Because you're here,

you lived. And the atheist says, well, because the storm didn't stop, a boat came and saved me. And so what happens is the priest sees it as, you know, God came and saved you. But because of the fact that it wasn't the storm that stopped, which is what the atheist wanted, the atheist saw it as God didn't come and save me. These other people came and saved me. It's the same event viewed through different lenses, which will give people the world that they exist in. And you got to become very understanding that other people were raised with different lives, different circumstances, different, you know, places of parts of town that they were born in, different amounts of money,

different races, different genders, different sexual beliefs, all of those, everyone comes differently. So they're going to have different beliefs in you. And that is okay. It's not about trying to prove somebody wrong. It's about just sitting there and being compassionate to someone who's got different viewpoints than them and realizing that for them and their beliefs, those viewpoints are correct for them and they work for them. For you and your beliefs and how you're raised, your viewpoints work for them. Because ultimately, all we're looking for is evidence that support our own beliefs. And if that's the case, if we know that confirmation bias exists, if we know that tribalism exists, if we know that cognitive dissonance exists, we're not going to be able to pull those out of the human brain. So what's the only thing that we can do? Change our actions. We can't change the human brain, so let's change our actions.

And the biggest action that you can change right now, if I give you the biggest tip of what I think the world needs, is just more compassion. Looking at someone, realizing I don't understand exactly where they're coming from, but I can still show them love no matter what and compassion no matter what. If you want to help somebody change, the best way is to show them some love. That's how people are actually going to change. And if they believe something different than you, let them. It's okay because nobody needs to challenge your beliefs because those are yours. So you don't need to challenge anybody else's belief. But if you realize that all of this is just literally the psychology of everything that's

working around us right now, you can sit back and not be as stressed out and go, okay, I think everything's going to be all right. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it with someone that you know and love. And I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.